Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thor's Day Hero: Bruenor Battlehammer

Dwarves were always just that, Dwarves. Another race in the Player's Handbook; they had beards and preferred axes, and got some kind of underground direction sense or something. I was never really intrigued by their entry enough to want to play one. Then I read Salvatore's The Crystal Shard in 1988, and I suddenly loved Dwarves.

One of the main characters, one of the "Heroes of the Hall", was a Dwarf named Bruenor Battlehammer. There wasn't a whole lot of D&D Dwarf fiction out there (other than proto-Tolkien), so Bruenor wasn't anything fresh and innovative, he was pretty much your stereotypical Dwarf. But he was a well-written stereotypical Dwarf, as were his Dwarf peers, and for that I was hooked. Salvatore has gone on to write a lot of books, and his Dwarves don't ever disappoint. I'm getting a wee tired of reading about the goth/emo Dark Elf Drizzt, but Bruenor and his Dwarven cousins are still a lot of fun to read about.

Bruenor's the reason I lean to the Dwarf race nowadays when rolling up new characters and the like. He's a man's Dwarf, tough as the stone he carved an empire out of with a wit as sharp as his axe. He loves beer and is a loyal friend to the end. That's reason enough alone to make him a Thor's Day Hero.

Dwarves man. I loved dwarves since the days of warcraft 2. For some reason I loved the stuff about the Bronzebeards and any other dwarf lore. The Hobbit is an excellent movie that displays dwarf awesomeness.

I love this feature, I love this Blog, jmezz and Mik are top tier awesome guys as are all you readers.I say this with the utmost respect because I gotta say, I really really despise fantasy Dwarves. (This can be blamed on a year managing a GW store in the 90's, and years of awful Dwarf player behavior in our WHFRP and Shadowrun rpg campaigns.)

For my money, Thibbledorf Pwent and his Gutbuster Brigade of Battleragers were Salvatore's greatest contributions to dwarf-lore. Bruenor is cool and all, but I got kind of frustrated with the eventual conflict between his kingship and his(i.e. Salvatore's) desire to have him out adventuring with his friends.